[9 -- The three new Councillors
seize power, and listen warmly to Nuncomar's grievances against Hastings]

With the three new Councillors came
out the judges of the Supreme Court. The chief justice was Sir *Elijah
Impey*. He was an old acquaintance of Hastings; and it is probable
that the Governor-General, if he had searched through all the inns of court,
could not have found an equally serviceable tool. But the members of Council
were by no means in an obsequious mood. Hastings greatly disliked the new
form of government, and had no very high opinion of his coadjutors.
They had heard of this, and were disposed to be suspicious and punctilious.
When men are in such a frame of mind, any trifle is sufficient to give
occasion for dispute. The members of Council expected a salute of twenty-one
guns from the batteries of Fort William. Hastings allowed them only seventeen.
They landed in ill-humour. The first civilities were exchanged with cold
reserve. On the morrow commenced that long quarrel which, after distracting
British India, was renewed in England, and in which all the most eminent
statesmen and orators of the age took active part on one or the other side.

Hastings was supported by Barwell. They
had not always been friends. But the arrival of the new members of Council
from England naturally had the effect of uniting the old servants of the
Company. Clavering, Monson, and Francis formed the majority. They instantly
wrested the government out of the hands of Hastings, condemned, certainly
not without justice, his late dealings with the Nabob Vizier, recalled
the English agent from Oude, and sent thither a creature of their own,
ordered the brigade which had conquered the unhappy Rohillas to return
to the Company's territories, and instituted a severe inquiry into the
conduct of the war. Next, in spite of the Governor-General's remonstrances,
they proceeded to exercise, in the most indiscreet manner, their new authority
over the subordinate presidencies; threw all the affairs of Bombay into
confusion; and interfered, with an incredible union of rashness and feebleness,
in the intestine [=internal] disputes of the Mahratta
Government. At the same time, they fell on the internal administration
of Bengal, and attacked the whole fiscal and judicial system, a system
which was undoubtedly defective, but which it was very improbable that
gentlemen fresh from England would be competent to amend. The effect of
their reforms was that all protection to life and property was withdrawn,
and that gangs of robbers plundered and slaughtered with impunity in the
very suburbs of Calcutta. Hastings continued to live in the Government-house,
and to draw the salary of Governor-General. He continued even to take the
lead at the council-board in the transaction of ordinary business; for
his opponents could not but feel that he knew much of which they were ignorant,
and that he decided, both surely and speedily, many questions which
to them would have been hopelessly puzzling. But the higher powers of government
and the most valuable patronage had been taken from him.

The natives soon found this out. They
considered him as a fallen man; and they acted after their kind. Some of
our readers may have seen, in India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture
to death, no bad type of what happens in that country, as often as fortune
deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an instant, all the sycophants
who had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pandar [=pander]
for him, to poison for him, hasten to purchase the favour of his victorious
enemies by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it be understood
that it wishes a particular man to be ruined; and, in twenty-four hours,
it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions so full
and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would
regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined victim
is not counterfeited at the foot of some illegal compact, and if some treasonable
paper is not slipped into a hiding-place in his house. Hastings was now
regarded as helpless. The power to make or mar the fortune of every man
in Bengal had passed, as it seemed, into the hands of the new Councillors.
Immediately charges against the Governor-General began to pour in. They
were eagerly welcomed by the majority, who, to do them justice, were men
of too much honour knowingly to countenance false accusations, but who
were not sufficiently acquainted with the East to be aware that, in that
part of the world, a very little encouragement from power will call forth,
in a week, more *Oates*es,
and Bedloes, and *Dangerfield*s,
than *Westminster
Hall* sees in a century.

It would have been strange indeed if,
at such a juncture, Nuncomar had remained quiet. That bad man was stimulated
at once by malignity, by avarice, and by ambition. Now was the time to
be avenged on his old enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen years, to establish
himself in the favour of the majority of the Council, to become the greatest
native in Bengal. From the time of the arrival of the new Councillors he
had paid the most marked court to them, and had in consequence been excluded,
with all indignity, from the Government-house. He now put into the hands
of Francis with great ceremony, a paper, containing several charges of
the most serious description. By this document Hastings was accused of
putting offices up to sale, and of receiving bribes for suffering offenders
to escape. In particular, it was alleged that Mahommed Reza Khan had been
dismissed with impunity, in consideration of a great sum paid to the Governor-General.

Francis read the paper in Council. A
violent altercation followed. Hastings complained in bitter terms of the
way in which he was treated, spoke with contempt of Nuncomar and of Nuncomar's
accusation, and denied the right of the Council to sit in judgment on the
Governor. At the next meeting of the Board, another communication from
Nuncomar was produced. He requested that he might be permitted to attend
the Council, and that he might be heard in support of his assertions. Another
tempestuous debate took place. The Governor-General maintained that the
council-room was not a proper place for such an investigation; that from
persons who were heated by daily conflict with him he could not expect
the fairness of judges; and that he could not, without betraying the dignity
of his post, submit to be confronted with such a man as Nuncomar. The majority,
however, resolved to go into the charges. Hastings rose, declared the sitting
at an end, and left the room, followed by Barwell. The other members kept
their seats, voted themselves a council, put Clavering in the chair, and
ordered Nuncomar to be called in. Nuncomar not only adhered to the original
charges, but, after the fashion of the East, produced a large supplement.
He stated that Hastings had received a great sum for appointing Rajah Goordas
treasurer of the Nabob's household, and for committing the care of his
Highness's person to the Munny Begum. He put in a letter purporting to
bear the seal of the Munny Begum, for the purpose of establishing the truth
of his story. The seal, whether forged, as Hastings affirmed, or genuine,
as we are rather inclined to believe, proved nothing. Nuncomar, as everybody
knows who knows India, had only to tell the Munny Begum that such a letter
would give pleasure to the majority of the Council, in order to procure
her attestation. The majority, however, voted that the charge was made
out; that Hastings had corruptly received between thirty and forty thousand
pounds; and that he ought to be compelled to refund.